PJ Fleck explains why he’s assigning some play calling duties to a few of his players

In his fourth season as a head coach, sometimes it seems like PJ Fleck has thought of everything when it comes to how he wants his program run.

During yesterday’s press conference before their tilt against Northwestern this weekend, Fleck explained how he and his staff are using “young guy practices” to both provide a unique new perspective for both players in leadership positions and hurt players, and it may also be helping to groom college football’s next up-and-coming coordinators.

“One thing that we’re doing with our players is giving them a different perspective. Sunday nights we practice with our young players. We scrimmage, and they have their own game and then we also practice after our practices, since they’re only about 50 minutes now, we have a young guy practice after that.”

“What we’ve also done is implement on Sunday nights, we’ve kind of turned the play calling over to [redshirt Senior quarterback] Connor Rhoda on the offense, and [Senior linebacker] Jonathan Celestin on defense, and give them the opportunity to see it from the coaching perspective of calling plays.”

“The greatest form of mastery is teaching,” Fleck explained. “Then we’re going to rotate different players to be able to call the game.”

“The best is when they get a delay of game. Well then I go over there and I pretend to yell at them, and then I say ‘That’s what it’s like on a headset.’ And they’re like ‘Really? It is?’ Because they don’t hear those conversations, they just think you guys are silent the whole time.”

Content manager - Doug took the reins in 2011 and the website has been better ever since. A former college player and small college coach, Doug now serves as assistant head coach / offensive coordinator at West Ottawa HS (MI).